Spokane Valley PD: Tech Locates Fatal Hit-and-Run Vehicle
The short version: Flock's own promo video touts a fast hit-and-run solve in Spokane Valley, but a single success story doesn't justify a nationwide plate-tracking dragnet.
Our Take
This clip comes straight from Flock Safety's own YouTube channel, not an independent newsroom, so treat it like the ad it is. A fatal hit-and-run is a genuine tragedy, and nobody begrudges investigators using every legitimate tool to find the driver responsible. But a 30-minute success story is exactly the kind of anecdote a surveillance vendor wants you to remember — not the thousands of cameras quietly logging every other driver's comings and goings with no warrant, no suspicion, and no crime in sight.
Flock built its whole business model on these feel-good clips: a genuinely sympathetic case, a quick resolution, and a tidy narrative that skips over retention windows, data-sharing agreements between agencies, and how easily plate-reader networks can be repurposed for things far removed from solving fatal crashes. Spokane Valley's win doesn't tell us who else is being tracked, for how long, or who gets access to that data down the line.
If you want to know whether your own neighborhood has been wired into this network, check our camera map, and if you'd rather your city not trade blanket surveillance for the occasional highlight reel, visit our take-action page to push back.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Flock, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.